The Modern World we live in exists in a state of cultural, political and economic globalization. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries two nations, Portugal and Spain pioneered the European discovery of sea routes that became the first channels of interaction between all of the world’s continents. Many
factors influenced Western Europe’s ability and desire to launch voyages of discovery; these include motivation, religion, technology, competition and luck. These expeditions had political, commercial, religious, diplomatic and intelligence gathering objectives.
In the early
fifteenth century the sea-faring countries of Europe were ready to expand their influence throughout the rest of the world through a program of continued and efficient exploration. In some cases the motivation for exploration was profit, in others the motive of exploration was to gain knowledge about the world. Still, other explorers justified their actions as an extension of the Crusades of Christianity against Islam. However, “European expansion was essentially a commercial venture” . Ogier Ghiselin de Besbecq, the sixteenth century diplomat wrote “that for the expeditions (to the Indies and the Antipodes) religion supplies the pretext and gold
